Who that goes abroad in these quiet days, and feels the subtle change from the grosser to the ethereal which pervades the very air, can escape the threefold thought of Life, Death, and Immortality?
The silence that has already fallen upon the jubilant voices of summer will extend and deepen day by day until even the thoughtless babbling of the brooks ceases and the hush becomes universal.

The earth, that a little time ago was producing such an endless variety of forms of life and beauty, will give birth to a myriad thoughts, deep, spiritual, and far-reaching; translating into the language of spirit the vast movement of the year, and completing its mysterious cycle with a vision of the sublime ends for which Nature stands, and to the consummation of which all things are borne forward.

And when the time is ripe there will come a transformation like the descent of the heavens upon the earth, flooding the dying world with unspeakable splendours; the sunset which closes the long summer day and leaves through the night of winter the fadeless promise of another dawn..